Class ParameterBlock

A ParameterBlock encapsulates all the information about sources and parameters (Objects) required by a RenderableImageOp, or other classes that process images.

Although it is possible to place arbitrary objects in the source Vector, users of this class may impose semantic constraints such as requiring all sources to be RenderedImages or RenderableImage. ParameterBlock itself is merely a container and performs no checking on source or parameter types.

All parameters in a ParameterBlock are objects; convenience add and set methods are available that take arguments of base type and construct the appropriate subclass of Number (such as Integer or Float). Corresponding get methods perform a downward cast and have return values of base type; an exception will be thrown if the stored values do not have the correct type. There is no way to distinguish between the results of "short s; add(s)" and "add(new Short(s))".

Note that the get and set methods operate on references. Therefore, one must be careful not to share references between ParameterBlocks when this is inappropriate. For example, to create a new ParameterBlock that is equal to an old one except for an added source, one might be tempted to write:

This code will have the side effect of altering the original ParameterBlock, since the getSources operation returned a reference to its source Vector. Both pb and pb1 share their source Vector, and a change in either is visible to both.

A correct way to write the addSource function is to clone the source Vector:

ParameterBlock

Constructs a ParameterBlock with a given Vector of sources and Vector of parameters.

Parameters:

sources - a Vector of source images

parameters - a Vector of parameters to be used in the rendering operation

Methods

shallowClone

public Object shallowClone()

Creates a shallow copy of a ParameterBlock. The source and parameter Vectors are copied by reference -- additions or changes will be visible to both versions.

Returns:

an Object clone of the ParameterBlock.

clone

public Object clone()

Creates a copy of a ParameterBlock. The source and parameter Vectors are cloned, but the actual sources and parameters are copied by reference. This allows modifications to the order and number of sources and parameters in the clone to be invisible to the original ParameterBlock. Changes to the shared sources or parameters themselves will still be visible.